


Caught in the Middle

by clairell



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Don't Forget Where You Belong, M/M, Sad Niall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1914018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairell/pseuds/clairell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall can't decide if this is a nuclear winter or if he's just waiting for someone to press the red button. </p><p>Or, the fight has reached a boiling point and Niall is right in the middle of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caught in the Middle

Niall can’t decide if this is a nuclear winter or if he’s just waiting for someone to press the red button.

With five people in a relationship, arguments are never small affairs. Having so many people involved, it becomes more like a war; choosing sides, throwing expensive things, the warfare of denying sexual pleasures to one another. And the odd number of five somehow always made it so one person was caught in the middle.

Now, Niall didn’t like to argue with his boyfriends. He didn’t like arguing whatsoever. He thought it was all pointless yelling, never getting anywhere, just this awful, loud, stalemate, made worse by the fact that he was always that one odd one in the middle.

And that’s not literal, usually, but right now, he’s sitting on the floor in between Zayn and Liam who’re canoodling in a chair that is much much much too small for the two of them, and Louis and Harry who are all tangled up in each other on the couch, looking like they’re going to tear each other’s clothes of right here and now.

He tries to focus on the football match.

“Harry wants to change the channel,” Louis says after a while.

“Why doesn’t Harry just ask for himself?” Zayn shoots back, making a point to move the clicker out of Louis’ reach.

Louis huffs. Harry mumbles something into his neck. Louis nods like he understands and pets Harry’s hair down, smoothing out the wild curls.

Zayn scoffs. Niall can hear Liam warning him not to take this any further, not in words, but in this low growl deep in his throat. Niall’s always known that those two have some sort of secret communication thing. And most of the time, it’s quite endearing.

Just not right now.

Zayn doesn’t listen.

“You’re treating him like a five-year-old,” he says in a very condescending tone. Louis scowls a scowl that only Louis can scowl. Niall would be lying if he says he isn’t scared by it. “And you don't baby Liam?” He asks, and Niall lets out a breath he doesn’t know he’d been holding. “It’s always, ‘Liam tie your shoes,’ and ‘Liam, make sure you’ve brushed your teeth!’. I’m sure he’s not a five-year-old either.”

Zayn’s head jolts back like he’s shocked. Harry is pleading with Louis with his eyes not to say any more. Liam is biting his lip. Niall is silent.

“Fuck you, Tomlinson.”

Louis smirks. “You wish you could.” And the way this is playing out, Niall thinks it seems more like a fight between Louis and Zayn than Louis and Zayn and Harry and Liam, but it is. Liam and Harry just haven’t joined into the fray quite yet. Niall can feel it in the air that it’s soon to come.

“You’re so immature,” Zayn says back, with a dismissive air in his voice. There’s something in his eyes that Niall notices, and it’s not friendly.

“Says the one who paints on his walls.”

He expects Zayn to explode back with something equally as cutting. He just says, “Watch yourself,” in a very dark tone.

Louis smiles. Harry shivers.

Niall supposes that Louis is the type of person who likes to anger people on purpose. He likes to rile them up and ruffle their feathers until they snap at him. Niall doesn’t know his reasoning behind that, because why would you even want to make people upset with you? But he also supposes that he’s not Louis.

Which is probably why he doesn’t see this coming, exactly.

Louis peels himself away from Harry and sits up. Harry looks around the room like a sleepy, lost puppy, and Niall can’t help but feel bad for him, at least to some extent.

Louis takes off down the hallway, flinging open doors, turning lights on and off, rifling through drawers and cupboards. Until he’s found it.

He comes back into the room with this evil little smile on his face. He’s holding a photo of something. Niall’s chest kind of caves when he sees what it is.

Liam springs from Zayn’s lap. “That’s mine, Louis,” he says, pointing to the picture of him and his sisters and his mum that’s happily hanging from between Louis’ fingers.

“I know,” Louis says.

Niall doesn’t know why, but everyone seems to have favourites. It makes sense. There are five of them and he figures that you just can’t love four people equally. Playing favourites is what gets them all into trouble in the first place. He would like to point out that he doesn’t have a favourite, and maybe that’s because he’s not anyone’s favourite, but right now it’s seems like a hell of a good thing to be.

Louis takes the photograph and tears it in two, in four, in eight, in sixteen, and into infinitesimally smaller and smaller pieces until it’s just a pile of the unhappiest confetti that Niall has ever seen.

Liam’s shocked gasp echoes through the room.

Zayn could’ve done the same thing to Harry, Niall supposes, to get back at Louis. And Harry would’ve just sat there and blubbered and maybe cursed a few times before running out of the room. The only difference is, with this, Liam is not a fucking sissy. His arms are as thick as Louis’ thighs. His eyes are red.

And he’s going to fucking kill someone.

Niall closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

Liam leaps across the floor and in an instant is chasing Louis around the room. They’re both knocking into things, tripping over expensive vases and leaving dents in the walls. Soon enough, Zayn and Harry are in on the action, pointing fingers and suddenly yelling.

“You pissed him off!” Harry shouts. “Lou had a right to do that!”

Zayn cackles. “You’re so fucking clueless, Harry! You’re just a damn baby!”

Niall can see angry tears forming in Harry’s eyes and he can’t take it anymore.

He stands up and does what he always does: he becomes a barrier. He silently walks between all of them and just waits until they notice he’s there. They stop fighting around him and throw him in the center of it all.

“And. Well. Maybe if Niall didn’t sit there like he didn’t care, none of us would have this problem!” Someone says. Niall doesn’t even acknowledge who it is. He lets it roll off his back.

“We need to stop,” he says calmly.

“We? Now you’re acting like we’re the problem? Don’t think you’re better than us just because you’re all passive and fucking calm.”

Niall grits his teeth, but doesn’t bark. “This is pointless,” he says, trying again. “You know it’s pointless. Someone’s going to get hurt.”

“As well as they should!” Liam shouts, taking a bowl of popcorn from the side table and hurling it across the room in Louis’ direction. It narrowly misses him and he just laughs.

“If only you were like this in the bedroom, eh Liam?” Louis says, somehow remaining calm as steam proceeds to erupt from Liam’s ears. “There’s a reason we keep you on the bottom, you know.”

Niall doesn’t really know what to think about this one, other than to point out that you don’t insult a man’s sexual ego. Ever.

Louis is pulling out all the stops.

“Stop it, Louis!” Liam whines. “But you never really are saying that, are you?” Louis giggles. Niall’s eyes widen, as do Liam’s. Louis’gone a bit far. What he’s saying is just so mean. It’s the kind of mean usually reserved for primary-school bullies on the playground.

Liam looks about ready to burst—but into flying fists or into tears, Niall doesn’t know.

In the other corner of the ring, Zayn is sobbing. Harry is yelling words at him that the anonymous haters on the internet use. Niall’s heard them out loud, of course, but they sound like another language from Harry’s mouth.

Niall’s had enough. He can feel anxiety bubbling up his throat. “Stop!” He shouts, and it’s his first word in this whole thing that’s above a normal talking voice. Still, no one listens.

He reaches out and holds Liam arm back so that he can’t launch another object at Louis. They do this all the time, Niall convinces himself. Liam’s not going to hurt him, his arm isn’t that good. And Zayn and Harry will calm down, and no one is going to get hurt, they’re just yelling, it’s all just yelling, it’s just loud words and—SMACK!

Niall is suddenly clutching his cheek and screaming for dear life.

Everyone freezes.

(So that’s what it takes to stop a full-on battle.)

Before anyone has time to say anything, Niall runs off to the toilet. He finds himself bleeding a little. Through tears, he winces. Blood? From skin-to-skin contact? He sighs, gripping the edge of the sink and letting all the tears just come out of him like water from a faucet.

It isn’t right that Liam hit him, and he knows it.

Husbands aren’t supposed to hit wives. Girlfriends aren’t supposed to hit boyfriends. And this isn’t different. It’s the same. It’s too the same. It’s too real. It’s too happening.

Before he realises it, he’s breathing like he can’t breathe.

He looks himself in the eye in the mirror. His face is a wreck. His eyes are red-rimmed, wet, and just a sad grey-blue. He shakes his head. He sits on the closed lid of the toilet and buries his face in his hands.

They have a notebook and a pen in the bathroom. Harry likes to make grocery lists whilst brushing his teeth. Louis insists he gets his best musical ideas in the shower.

Niall picks it up. He starts writing.

Someone pounds on the door a while later. He hopes it’s an apology, but it’s more yelling.

“He’s going to call the police on you, Liam!” Zayn’s voice? “You’ve just fucked everything up! You stupid piece of shit!”

Harry is scream-crying, now, muttering things that don’t make sense. He certainly doesn’t sound like the same Harry who was yelling racial slurs at Zayn only a few minutes ago.

Even more surprisingly, Louis is crying. Blubbering, “You hit him. Liam you hit—you hit him!” He gasps for breath. “You hit him. You hit him.”

Liam is not saying anything. Niall ignores them. He writes and he doesn’t stop.

——-

The noise in the hallway outside the door dissipates. Niall guesses that it’s around one in the morning. He unlocks the door and creeps down the corridor to the closet where he keeps his clothes. He fills a bag.

When they wake up, he’s going to be long gone. Maybe back in Ireland. Maybe in Australia. Maybe in the States. Right now, it doesn’t matter. The where doesn’t matter so much as the how.

He’ll just walk. There are millions of people in London. He’ll blend in.

His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a chair scraping across the kitchen floor.

“Where are you going?” A hoarse voice croaks. Niall doesn’t want to turn his head, but he does. Harry. “Niall. Niall. Where are you going?”

Niall doesn’t know what to say. He can hardly look into Harry’s puffy, bloodshot eyes without feeling the need to cry himself.

“Niall. Niall. Where are you-where are you-” Harry stutters. “Where are you going?”

Niall shushes him and reaches for the door handle. Harry grabs his arm. Harry’s hands are shaking.

“Where are you-”

“I’m just going, Harry,” he says, finally. He grabs the doorknob and flings the door open. It hits the wall. The others are probably stirring. Niall runs down the hall, down the steps, out of the building, onto the street. He doesn’t stop. He waves his hands like a madman until a cab stops. “Where to?” “As far as this thing will go.” The driver hardly gives him an odd glance before pulling away from the shoulder of the street.

——-

Harry finds the notebook that Niall dropped. He opens it.

——-

Turns out a London cab can take you to the airport. Turns out a plane can take you back to Ireland.

——-

Niall doesn’t get a call until a week later. He’s managed to stop crying by then. It’s Zayn. He answers.

“Can I help you?” He asks, and those words are too easy to inject with sarcasm, but somehow, he doesn’t. It’s straightforward and respectful.

“Niall,” Zayn breathes, almost like he’s a father saying his newborn’s name for the first time. “Niall. Niall. Niall.”

“How many times are you gonna say it? Should I come back in a few minutes?”

Zayn laughs. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

“Are you coming home?”

“No.”

“But we all miss you. Liam’s sorry. We’ve all made up. We need our missing piece.”

“Just…I…no, Zayn. I’m not coming home.”

“But-”

“You don’t understand what you’ve put me through.”

Zayn sighs, and it’s not just a sigh, it’s a sob. It’s a full-on, bleeding, messy sob. Niall shivers.

“We can change,” Zayn sniffles. “We’re sorry. We’re all sorry. Liam didn’t mean-”

“But he did.”

“When are you going to forgive us, Ni?”

It’s Niall’s turn to sigh, now, but he doesn’t let it turn into crying.

Zayn’s breath catches in his throat. “I don’t know what we can do to make you forgive us.”

“You can’t do anything right now. It’s broken, Zayn. We’re working on fixing it. Let the glue dry before we put any water in this vase.” He surprises himself with his metaphor.

He remembers being ten and playing football in the house and breaking his mother’s favourite vase. He remembers spending a whole weekend gluing it back together because he felt so horrible about it. He remembers his mum standing behind him and admiring the new object, with his cracks and holes where the pieces were too small to salvage. He remembers her saying, “It was your great-grandmother’s,” then sighing and smiling, then, “and now it’s yours.”

He thinks to himself, this broken little vase is ours.

Zayn finally speaks up. He gives a little, sad laugh. “You’re so hard to understand, Ni.”

Niall nods, fully aware that Zayn can’t see it.

Seriousness returns to Zayn’s voice. “Are we breaking up?”

Niall bites his lip. “No,” he says, simply. “Taking a holiday.”

Zayn hums. He can work with that. “Just don’t forget where you belong, okay?”

Niall wonders how Zayn knows those lyrics.

He recalls dropping the notebook as he sprinted from the scene of the crime. “The truth is in the song,” he says.

He smiles, and this time, it’s real.


End file.
